Fighting bias

Callon-Butler says businesses operating in the sex industry often experience discrimination and so struggle to get finance or financial services.

"When you go talking to these entrepreneurs they all experience mainstream bias from financial institutions who discriminate against them on moral grounds who think what you do is dirty," she says.

The discrimination against businesses in the industry is so endemic that small business and family enterprise ombudsman Kate Carnell is looking into it.

"There are a broad range of businesses the banks have decided they don't like and won't work with," says Carnell. "Brothels and sex shops, they pay tax. So on what basis should banks be prepared to be moral arbiters for what is moral or ethical? I would have thought banks would be the last people we would want to be our moral arbiter in society."

Kate Carnell AO, Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, is concerned about discrimination by banks against businesses in the adult industry. Credit:Louie Douvis

"I was amazed at how broad this issue was," says Callon-Butler. "But if you have a token that is designed for the industry, you don't need the approval of a bank or gateway to run your business. It's essentially like a PayPal for the adult industry."

For Callon-Butler, creating a cryptocurrency for the adult and sex industry is a feminist issue.

"I have experienced the stigma myself and it just propels me to do it more," she says. "In the first couple of weeks I joined Intimate as a co-founder we were invited to exhibit at the Web Summit in Portugal and then at the last minute they said we couldn't. I asked why and they said 'I think the content of your business is going to make female entrepreneurs uncomfortable'."

Transparency is key

The anonymity of crypto-currencies have obvious benefits for the sex and adult industries but these benefits go beyond privacy according to Callon-Butler.

"Where it gets really interesting is safety is a big issue in this industry, particularly where there is a product or service that requires face to face contact in the real world from escorting to dating," she says. "We thought we really need a better trust and safety reputation system to protect people and incentivise them to be good actors on the network."

Using a cryptocurrency like Intimate would mean users wouldn't have to give away their identity but they would have to maintain and protect their reputation.

"This technology is fundamentally private but its also fundamentally transparent, everyone in the network owns it and it is unhackable," says Callon-Butler. "If you engage in escort and you were to act badly a transaction like that could be recorded and never change and everyone on the network could see it. Everyone on the network can see how everyone else acts so reputation becomes really, really important."

To do this, Intimate is partnering with 'oracles', which are servers outside the block chain which help identify important information to be checked for.

Intimate has a "growing list" of companies that have signed on to accept the Intimate token when it launches at the end of March.

The original goal was to raise $24.5 million however this valuation was pegged to a cryptocurrency which has increased dramatically in value and so Callon-Butler says the estimates will have to be revised.

'This is somewhere I can make an impact'

Callon-Butler's background is in renewable energy before she became interested in blockchain and crypto-currencies.

"I wanted to find an industry where it was really needed and it wasn't until I came across the adult industry I felt 'Wow this is somewhere it can make an impact'," she says.

"I saw the institutional barriers which mean the barriers to entry to get in are so high it is stifling innovation and preventing diversity in the industry and I thought 'Wow this market place is under served'."

Callon-Butler expects Intimate will have broader application beyond the adult and sex industries.

"We see the adult industry as the perfect use case to prove these concepts, but in the future tell me an industry which won't praise data privacy and data verification," she says.

Callon-Butler is speaking at Pause Festival in Melbourne on 8 February.